“Come and meet my wife,” said Major Hunt. “Stella, here are the two young Australians that used to make my life a burden!”
Everybody shook hands indiscriminately, and presently they joined forces round a big table, while Jim and Wally poured out questions concerning the regiment and every one in it.
“Most of them are going strong,” Major Hunt said—“we have a good few casualties, of course, but we haven’t lost many officers—most of them have come back. I think all your immediate chums are still in France. But I’ve been out of it myself for two months—stopped a bit shrapnel with my hand, and it won’t get better.” He indicated a bandaged left hand as he spoke, and they realized that his face was worn, and deeply lined with pain. “It’s stupid,” he said, and laughed. “But when are you coming back? We’ve plenty of work for you.”
They told him, eagerly.
“Well, you might just as well learn all you can before you go out,” Major Hunt said. “The war’s not going to finish this winter, or the next. Indeed, I wouldn’t swear that my six-year-old son, who is drilling hard, won’t have time to be in at the finish!” At which Mrs. Hunt shuddered and said, “Don’t be so horrible, Douglas!” She was a slight, pretty woman, cheery and pleasant, and she made them all laugh by her stories of work in a canteen.
“All the soldiers used to look upon us as just part of the furniture,” she said. “They used to rush in, in a break between parades, and give their orders in a terrible hurry. As for saying “Please—well——”
“You ought to have straightened them up,” said Major Hunt, with a good-tempered growl.
“Ah, poor boys, they hadn’t time! The Irish regiments were better, but then it isn’t any trouble for an Irishman to be polite; it comes to him naturally. But those stolid English country lads can’t say things easily.” She laughed. “I remember a young lance-corporal who used often to come to our house to see my maid. He was terribly shy, and if I chanced to go into the kitchen he always bolted like a rabbit into the scullery. The really terrible thing was that sometimes I had to go on to the scullery myself, and run him to earth among the saucepans, when he would positively shake with terror. I used to wonder how he ever summoned up courage to speak to Susan, let alone to face the foe when he went to France!”
“That’s the sort that gets the V.C. without thinking about it,” said Major Hunt, laughing.
“I was very busy in the Canteen one morning—it was a cold, wet day, and the men rushed us for hot drinks whenever they had a moment. Presently a warrior dashed up to the counter, banged down his penny and said ‘Coffee!’ in a voice of thunder. I looked up and caught his eye as I was turning to run for the coffee—and it was my lance-corporal!”